I'm not even sure what Ebert's point about video games and art is in this review. Pretty much the most substantial thing he says is this:

"The movie, directed by Xavier Gens, was inspired by a best-selling video game and serves as an excellent illustration of my conviction that video games will never become an art form -- never, at least, until they morph into something else or more."

OK, I'll take that as a thesis, but he says almost nothing else about it. Just this:

"The key producer on "Hitman" was Adrian Askarieh, who told Variety he doesn't consult or collaborate with the makers of a video game he has purchased for filming, but focuses on the characters and situation. Wise. To the degree he doesn't try to reproduce the aim-and-shoot material, he has a movie here. To the degree Olyphant and Kurylenko can flesh out their characters, they do."

So basically, he states this under the assumption that video games are all run and gun, and calls it a day. I don't know if he's just working under this assumption because he's not bothering to take the time to really learn a thing or two about video games, or if he's willfully ignoring everything else out there (of which there's plenty) because it doesn't support his argument.

In any case, yeah, he's wrong, and we all know it. That works for me.

How can a movie critic (Roger Ebert) who obviously does not play games, have ANYTHING to say about whether they constitute an artform or not.  I mean to read his review it seems that he's basing all of his ideas about video game on the crap movies that were made from video game properties and maybe some Jack Thompson literature.  What really bothers me is that this guy got his start doing fan right ups of sci-fi stories and comic books in the late fifties to early sixties.  I mean if their was ever a struggle that resembled the current plight of Video Games, its probably early comic and sci-fi lit.  

Hypocrite I cry!

Oh well.  I try not to get to worked up over this since he will probably be dead soon.  See....problem solves itself.

I find the Orange Box PS3 issue to be interesting.  On the one hand, we've got games like Drake's Fortune, Call of Duty 4, and others.

And then we've got - the Orange Box, a 3 year old game made for PC's, ported to the Xbox 360 which uses the same DirectX API as Windows.  And then it's handed over to EA.

Personally, I'm not sure who to blame more.  To do this right, the developers would have to take the same track as Team Ninja:  use the same assets (artwork, sound, etc), and build a new engine from the ground up to take advantage of the PS3's unique setup.  The result there was a better than perfect port.

So you could blame EA for not having developers either dedicated enough or, far more likely, given the proper time and resources to do it right.

But at the end of the day, this is Valve's game, and they could have negotiated that if they didn't like how the game performed (met a Valve seal of quality), they could have pulled the plug.  Instead, it seems that they're content to let their name be dragged from the dirt and simply say "Oh, well, the PS3 is haaaard."

I'm not going to say it isn't, or that Sony couldn't be more helpful to developers.  But for either EA or Valve to let the game go out in the condition people have reported shows a lack of care for quality.  Look at Blizzard - a company that waits until a game is *right* before allowing it out in any way, and patches games nearly a decade after they're released.  They make plenty of money - but part of that's because they care about the art.

Valve is full of very smart, very talented people.  And I hope they feel ashamed of themselves for how their crown jewel is being treated by another company, and letting it get that bad.